Welcome rains helped to recharge our rivers and streams a bit last week, while knocking back water temperatures for a little while. That made the trout fishing better while putting a damper on river bassin’.

It looks like the rains may now subside and north Georgia’s flowing waters will return to more normal summertime conditions. The time is right to give the “popper/dropper” technique a try on your favorite pond or stream. Double-dip on your fish catching potential by attaching a second fly or lure to your favorite offering.

For trouters, try a small beetle, stimulator, elk hair caddis, or larger adams as the first fly. To the bend of the hook tie on 2 to 6 (yes, six) feet of tippet, depending on your casting ability, and add a dropper fly to the other end of the tippet. Crimp a #6 dinsmore shot about 8 inches in front of the dropper fly. Good dropper patterns are fur ants, pheasant tails, hares ears and caddis larvae.

For river bream, just substitute a small popper, foam spider, or similar buoyant offering for the first fly. Flyfishing bassers should add 2-3 feet of 8-pound test dropper line to the back of their bigger popper or stealth bomber, and then tie on a black woolly bugger. Spincasting bassers can add 2-3 feet of dropper line to the back of a Pop-R and then add a small hair jig, fluke, or white zonker.

By working more of the water column, you’ve got a better shot at your targets, especially when the sun is high and the fish are laying low. Sunday afternoon’s Cataloochee rainbows approved of the drowned ant droppers, so give this setup a try soon.

Dukes Report – “Trouter23, Wily Trout (and Dredger) read Dredger’s recent tips and followed last week’s monsoons to Smithgall. Saturday morning’s “epic flood” stymied the early action, but by mid-afternoon streamflow had receded, turbidity kicked back up to two feet, and it was “game on” til the end the day. A nice handful of rainbows, with one slightly longer than the twenty- inch landing net, fell to hot pink san juans on 3X tippet.

The day ended with an interesting bruin encounter. Trouter said he was going to post a video on NGTO, so be on the lookout there for Yogi.” – Bluelines

“Stream X was smokin Tuesday week ago (July 8). Water temp 60 and plenty of water. Got em on top all day. No big uns this time (over 10”), but numbers made up for it. If you are over that way, you need to check it out. All this rain and cooler temps should keep things going all summer. Beetles mid-day and anything yellow (X Caddis, sulphur parachute, sulphur cripple) early and late were the ticket.

Also as a bonus, I took a 2 hour mid-day detour up IDBIS Creek to check out the USFS/TU brook trout structures. First structure took a 7 incher, then next one a 9 incher (measured) and then a couple of pools further up rose and lipped (slow motion mouth wide open rise) a legitimate 10 plus incher. I worked on him for about a half hour with four different flies and got him to come up again but he finally got too wise. I know where he lives and will come back for him. Got pics of the other two. Let the project coordinator know their stream structures are working!

With all the rain and cooler temps the small streams ought to be fabulous all summer into fall, especially with terrestrials. Glad the Park fished well for you and Kidd. Sinking ants are one of my favorite dropper flies late spring thru summer. I started tying some with a black bead on the front instead of coated thread to help sink rate. Will let you know how that works.” – Banker *note: Blueline expert “Banker” had some good trips and submitted these reports. Stream names omitted to honor the author and protect his honey holes.